Kevin Culligan is a Shareholder and member of Maynard Cooper’s Intellectual Property Litigation and Intellectual Property Protection practice groups. He has focused his practice for more than 35 years on the litigation, trial, arbitration and appeal of intellectual property matters, concentrating primarily on patent, trade secret and unfair competition cases in the fields of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, biotechnology and financial services. Kevin also has extensive licensing experience, including the development and execution of licensing and enforcement programs involving patent portfolios that include hundreds of patents.

In 2014 and 2016, Kevin was honored as one of the best of the best patent litigators in the country and in 2014 as one of the 30 best practitioners in the field worldwide by The Legal Media Group. He has also been recognized for his patent litigation work by Managing Intellectual Property and IAM, and was named as one of the preeminent life sciences practitioners in North America in Euromoney LMG’s 2012 and 2014 editions of “Life Sciences”.

Kevin is a frequent lecturer on various intellectual property law matters, and he served as a faculty member for organizations that include the Practising Law Institute and the American Conference Institute.

Before joining Maynard Cooper & Gale, Culligan was a partner in Goodwin Procter’s IP Litigation Group, Patent Litigation Practice and FinTech Practice. He earned an A.B. in Biology from Colgate University in 1976 and a J.D. from Cornell Law School in 1980, and was a partner for many years at Fish & Neave before that patent litigation firm merged with another firm in 2005.

Chief Judge Braden was appointed to the United States Court of Federal Claims on July 14, 2003, by President George W. Bush, after being confirmed by unanimous consent of the United States Senate. She was sworn into office by Senator Jeff Sessions. On March 13, 2017, President Donald J. Trump appointed Judge Braden as Chief Judge.

On March 2, 2018, the Howard University Law School presented Chief Judge Braden with an award for “the Advancement of Intellectual Property Law.” In September 2017, Chief Judge Braden was appointed as a member of the Administrative Conference’s Committee on Judicial Review and assigned to the Agency Guidance Project.

In January 2015, Judge Braden was appointed by the American Law Institute as one of seven Judicial Advisors to the RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW ON COPYRIGHT. In 2015, Judge Braden was appointed as a member of the Howard University Law School Intellectual Property Program Advisory Board. In 2013, Judge Braden was appointed to the Judges Special Committee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association and named as Chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the Advisory Council of the United States Court of Federal Claims. In 2012, Judge Braden received the Linn Inn Alliance Distinguished Service Medal at the New York Intellectual Property Lawyers Association Annual Dinner. In 2012, Judge Braden was appointed as Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Intellectual Property Law Task Force to consider how to more efficiently adjudicate “small” patent infringement cases. In November 2011, she was recognized at a United States Supreme Court ceremony, and received the American Inns of Court’s Platinum Distinction Award for her work as President of the Giles S. Rich American Inn of Court. She also has served as a Member of the Editorial Board of the American Intellectual Property Law Association.

From 2009 to 2012, Judge Braden was appointed as a Member of the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility-Judges Advisory Committee of the American Bar Association. In 2007, Judge Braden was elected as a Member of the American Law Institute and was active in drafting RESTATEMENT OF LAW THIRD, RESTITUTION AND UNJUST ENRICHMENT. In 2004, she was inducted as a Senior Fellow of the ABA’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Section by Justice O’Connor at a ceremony held at the United States Supreme Court.

Prior to joining the bench, Judge Braden litigated complex federal and administrative law cases in private practice in trial and appellate courts. In particular, her work in the intellectual property area received favorable notice in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, National Law Journal, and the Journal of the American Bar Association, and was featured in Interfaces on Trial: Intellectual Property and Interoperability In The Global Software Industry. In 1996, Judge Braden was honored by the Computer Law Association for winning multiple decisions in the Eastern District of New York, the Eastern District of Texas, the Second Circuit, and a certified question to the Supreme Court of Texas in Computer Assocs. Int’l, Inc. v. Altai Inc., a landmark case that changed the application of copyright law to computer software. In 1998, she also won a companion case in France before the Cour de Appel de Paris.

In private practice, Judge Braden represented a wide variety of client interests before almost every major department and federal agency, testified before the United States Congress on a variety of matters, and was a principal lobbyist for the Emergency Oil and Steel Loan Guarantee Act of 1999, that established a $1 billion federal loan guarantee program to assist bankrupt and troubled steel mills and small oil companies. Judge Braden received a B.A. degree (1970) and J. D. degree (1973) from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She also attended post graduate courses at the Harvard Law School in the summer of 1978.

Leslie Spencer, co-chair of the firm's diversity committee, is a partner in the IP litigation practice. She works with clients on intellectual property matters involving software, networking, security, financial technology (“FinTech”) and other emerging technologies. She has over 15 years of experience litigating patent disputes in district courts, including through Markman hearing, trial and appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She is a registered patent attorney, and appears before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Leslie also counsels clients regarding IP asset protection, IP transactions and freedom-to-operate opinions.

Prior to practicing law, Leslie worked for financial services and e-commerce companies, and supervised the development of a smart card-based secure transaction system.

Jonathan R. DeFosse is a litigation partner resident in Fried Frank’s Washington, DC office.

Mr. DeFosse's practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and counseling involving a wide range of product areas, including automotive technologies, consumer electronics, telecommunications, website design, cloud computing, and medical devices. Mr. DeFosse regularly appears in federal courts throughout the United States, including the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of Texas, the Eastern District of Virginia, the District of Delaware, the Northern and Central Districts of California, and the Northern District of Illinois. Mr. DeFosse also regularly appears before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in connection with post-grant review proceedings.

Mr. DeFosse has an established track record of achieving successful outcomes on behalf of his clients. Within the last few years, Mr. DeFosse has obtained complete victories for his clients in numerous matters, including cases concerning diesel fuel injection systems, online health records management systems, drowsiness detection systems, and hybrid engines.

Mr. DeFosse also has substantial experience with inter partes review proceedings. For example, he has represented companies in petitions challenging the validity of patents concerning light-emitting panel displays, pattern recognition systems, telematics units, wireless communications systems, crash avoidance systems, hybrid engines, adaptive cruise control systems, and tail lights.

Robert M. Masters is the head of Fried Frank’s Intellectual Property Litigation Group and is resident in the Firm's Washington, DC office.

Mr. Masters has extensive experience in all phases of intellectual property law. He routinely handles patent, trade secret, copyright and trademark/trade dress litigations in courts throughout the US and before the International Trade Commission. In addition to his litigation experience, Mr. Masters regularly advises clients on intellectual property licensing and negotiations, portfolio management and monetization, as well as issues arising in mergers and acquisitions.

Mr. Masters represents clients on matters involving a wide range of technologies, including consumer electronics and semiconductor designs; hardware, software and apps for computers and smartphones; secured internet/network communications and protocols; telecommunications; financial services; and medical devices, among others.

Matthew Kelly is the Managing Director and Chief Intellectual Property Counsel with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the world’s largest and most diverse derivatives exchange. He is a patent attorney and is in charge of all aspects of intellectual property including the patent and trademarks prosecution, intellectual property licensing, acquisitions and litigation.

W. Karl Renner is a Principal in the Washington, D.C. office of Fish & Richardson P.C. Mr. Renner co-chairs the firm’s Post-Grant Practice Group, and he serves on the firm’s Management Committee. His practice emphasizes client counseling, strategic patent prosecution, contentious inter and ex parte post-grant and reissue work, due diligence and freedom-to-operate investigations, and patent-related opinion work. In this practice, Mr. Renner has provided the strategic direction for well over 300 AIA post-grant matters, challenging and defending patents, most commonly in coordination with litigation counsel amidst co-pending disputes. Recently, Mr. Renner was elected to serve as an interim director of the PTAB Bar Association, the first national bar association of its kind to form in more than 30 years. The PTAB Bar Association intends to establish best practices for the unique practice and skills required before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

Michael T. Zoppo is a Principal in Fish & Richardson’s New York office. A registered patent lawyer, his practice focuses on the trial and appeal of patent cases, as well as related counseling in the areas of financial services, electrical/computer engineering, materials science, automotive technologies, and semiconductors. In addition to patent cases, he litigates trade secret, Lanham Act, breach of contract, defamation, and fraud cases. Before Michael focused his practice on litigation and counseling, he spent several years prosecuting patent applications in technical disciplines such as power systems, chemistry, aircraft propulsion, and semiconductors.

Charles R. Macedo, a physicist by training, litigates in all areas of intellectual property law, including patent, trademark and copyright law, with a special emphasis in complex litigation and appellate work. Companies and individuals from a wide range of industries turn to him to develop offensive and defensive strategies for the development and enforcement of their patent and trademark portfolios.

Fluent in technical jargon spoken by inventors and clients, patentese spoken at the PTO, legalese spoken by courts and attorneys, business jargon spoken by management, and plain English, he seeks to translate complex subject matter into terms all can understand.

The author of The Corporate Insider's Guide to U.S. Patent Practice, Mr. Macedo has been cited as an authority on intellectual property issues by the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, BNA, Bloomberg, Inside Counsel, Managing Intellectual Property, Technology Transfer Tactics, IP Law 360, JIPLP and other media.

His patent experience encompasses a broad range of industries and products including Internet, e-commerce, content delivery and computer-enabled inventions; financial services, transaction processing, electronic wallets and virtual or synthetic currency, including Bitcoins and all other Alt-coins; Software-As-A-Service; social media; semiconductor and photomasks; green energy and power, including wind generators and batteries; construction materials and structures; life sciences; and apparel, to name a few. Mr. Macedo also has enforced and defended against trademark assertions and/or opposition proceedings for financial service providers, casinos and resorts, non-profit organizations, celebrities; cosmetic companies, luxury retailers of designer handbags and retail chains. He also advises clients on IP contracts, licensing, confidentiality agreements, terms of services and IP acquisitions and transfers.

By identifying vulnerabilities and considering variations on design concepts, Mr. Macedo helps clients develop strategies to maximize protection and prevent infringement challenges. He frequently serves as special counsel to companies seeking an IP strategy, not just a patent; to IP holders in anticipation of litigation and as coordinating counsel for multiple law firms.

He is consistently at the forefront of complex and emerging patent issues in the financial services and transaction processing industries. Clients ranging from international banks, broker dealers and new business ventures call on Mr. Macedo to develop patent strategies, prepare patents, assert rights and defend against infringement claims. His work includes developing and implementing patent strategies associated with such cutting edge financial innovations like bitcoins and other synthetic currency or math-based assets. His experience includes successfully defending the Discover Card division of Morgan Stanley from one of the earliest business method patent assertions, and leading the team to implement and enforce the deposit sweep patent portfolio for Island Intellectual Property LLC. He has also helped clients implementing insurance related products seek patent and other intellectual property protection.

His experience before the Patent Trial and Appeals Board and its predecessor Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, including acting as leading counsel in inter partes review and covered business method proceedings, as well as advising and analyzing in the background. He also has represented patent owners in ex parte appeals, including reversals of obviousness rejections in Ex parte Buarque de Macedo.

Mr. Macedo writes prolifically and lectures regularly as he tracks and analyzes in real time the most important developments affecting IP strategy and litigation. As Co-Chair of the Amicus Committee of the New York Intellectual Property Law Association, Mr. Macedo has been principal counsel or additional counsel on amicus briefs in some of the leading patent cases of recent years, including Cuozzo (at Federal Circuit en banc petition, Supreme Court petition for certiorari and merits brief stage), Highmark and Octane (at the Supreme Court), Kimble v. Marvel (at the Supreme Court), Mayo v. Prometheus (at the Supreme Court), Association of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics Inc. (at the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit), CLS Bank Int’l v. Alice (at the Federal Circuit en banc and at the Supreme Court in the petition and merits brief stage), and Akamai (at the Federal Circuit on remand). His appellate experience also includes petitions for mandamus, for rehearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of various clients.

He holds bachelors and masters degrees in physics from The Catholic University of America and a law degree from Columbia Law School, all with honors. He was the sole law clerk to Hon. Daniel M. Friedman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 1989–1990. The recipient of the prestigious AIPLA Robert C. Watson Award, Mr. Macedo is included in Super Lawyers, IP Stars and Million Dollar Verdict. He also was a member of the Editorial Board for the American Intellectual Property Law Association Quarterly Journal and currently serves on the Editorial Board for Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice published by Oxford University Press.

In his role performing the function and duties of the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Joseph Matal provides leadership and oversight to one of the largest intellectual property offices in the world, with over 12,000 employees and an annual budget of over $3 billion. Mr. Matal also serves as the principal advisor to the President, through the Secretary of Commerce, on domestic and international intellectual property policy matters.

As an Associate Solicitor in the USPTO’s Office of Solicitor, Matal briefed and argued appeals of patent and trademark decisions before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the U.S. District Court, and assisted in the development of legal positions taken by the U.S. Solicitor General in patent and copyright cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Matal recently served as acting Chief of Staff for the agency, and has advised the director on legislative matters.

Matal previously served as the General Counsel of the Judiciary Committee for former Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and as a Judiciary Committee Counsel to former Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ). In that role, he was the principal staff drafter and negotiator of legislation that became the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, the first comprehensive patent law overhaul since 1952. Matal has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Joseph R. Klinicki is a partner at IP boutique Condo Roccia Koptiw LLP based out of Philadelphia, PA. Joe has managed his client’s domestic and international patent portfolios that range in size from a few core filings to thousands of assets worldwide. Joe has a range of experience advising start-ups, established firms, and large multi-nationals in several different industries. Joe’s practice is focused on advising clients regarding patent portfolio development and portfolio monetization. He understands that there are different ways patents and other IP can be used to support a company’s business objectives and believes that it important to understand a client’s business and strategic goals before an effective portfolio management strategy can be established.

In addition to portfolio management, Joe has extensive experience in patent prosecution, patent licensing, and patent litigation. Joe’s practice has involved diverse work in many industries such as telecommunications, data security, cloud computing, cryptography, financial services, computer software, video compression, and more.